Left hand Web3, right hand AI, that's the true Web3.0

Web3.0 is not Web3 + NFT, not Web3 + DAO, not Web3 + a VC popular protocol, but Web3 + AI.

Written by: Liu Honglin

The hottest technology topics in the past two years are AI and Web3.

The explosion of AI is visible. After ChatGPT, the entire rhythm has shifted from "humans teaching AI to do things" to "AI finding things to do by itself," from models to products, from content generation to autonomous agents. Meanwhile, after the hype of Web3 has subsided, the construction heat of basic modules such as stablecoin payments, on-chain settlement, and RWA structures remains.

On the surface, these seem like two unrelated fields of technology, one dealing with intelligence and the other with decentralization. However, more and more entrepreneurs and tech communities are beginning to realize that these two systems may be coming closer together and even need each other.

The question is, do they really need each other? Or is it just two buzzwords trying to find a story to tell?

If you look at it from a structural perspective, the answer is actually very clear - AI is the first entity that can truly utilize the Web3 system, and Web3 has finally found its most compatible service target.

Why does AI need Web3?

More and more AI projects are shifting towards an agent-based direction, not just as question-and-answer tools, but as "agents" — capable of taking tasks, adjusting models, running inferences, and delivering results. This sounds like a technological upgrade, but in reality, it is a challenge to identity and fulfillment logic.

AI can't register a company, sign a contract, or open a bank account. You can't expect an AI agent to complete a task and run to apply for an invoice, find a financial reconciliation, and get the final payment after three months. What it needs is a permissionless, automated, real-time fulfillment enforcement system, not an administrative credit process.

The traditional financial system is inherently unsolvable to AI, but Web3 is structured and designed from the beginning to be designed for "automatic collaboration between trustless subjects". It provides reusable on-chain identities, programmable contracts, stablecoin payments, and verifiable behavioral records, all of which provide a basic "market interface" for AI's behavioral engagement.

More importantly, Web3 can complete the settlement loop without platforms, without trust assumptions, and without central accounts—this capability is not an "add-on" for AI, but a "necessity."

Currently, projects like io.net (computing power coordination), Bittensor (AI model collaboration), and Gensyn (task scheduling) are exploring such paths. Although the scale is still small and the structural design is complex, at least the direction is correct.

More importantly, such systems are not only effective for AI but also hold great value for future machine-to-machine collaboration scenarios. For example, an autonomous vehicle wanting to retrieve map data over the network does not need human authorization; it only needs to verify the calling permissions and complete the payment on-chain. Similar situations include data transactions between edge devices and logistics instruction execution between humanoid robots, which are structural collaborations that traditional account systems cannot achieve, but Web3 can "automatically complete and settle."

So AI is not the "new user profile" of Web3, but a real stress test to verify the structural capabilities of Web3. It brings not only a market but also an opportunity for standardization.

Why does Web3 need AI?

From another perspective, what AI brings to Web3 is not just "new scenarios," but "new solutions to old problems."

Over the years, Web3 has always wanted to be a "trustless collaboration system" - allowing automatic settlement and automatic fulfillment between strangers and institutions, without relying on platform matchmaking, and without cumbersome intermediary and clearing processes. But the problem is that there has never been a real "just-in-use" object of the system.

Human users have overly high demands for the user experience: wallets are difficult to use, Gas fees are too expensive, transactions are too slow, and KYC is complex. Coupled with regulatory risks and issues of fund security, it's hard to find an ordinary user willing to complete tasks and settlements on-chain every day. As a result, many Web3 projects find that after finishing their protocols, no one uses them, leading to a standstill.

But AI is different. AI does not need user experience, it does not care about financial licenses or identity verification, it only cares about one thing: can the task be completed, can the results be monetized.

This makes AI the most suitable collaborative entity for Web3 not because it is "smarter", but because it naturally adapts to the "structured, programmable, and trustless" system of Web3.

Here are a few specific questions to see why AI is better suited for Web3:

• If multiple AIs are involved in a task at the same time, how do you determine who is doing better and how do you get paid? Web3 can be solved through on-chain recording and voting mechanisms;
• How can transactions be established when AI systems do not recognize each other and lack credit endorsements? The verifiable identity system of Web3 can support this.
• Settle the task immediately after completion, without waiting for manual confirmation, which cannot be done by the traditional banking system, but Web3 can be completed with stablecoins and smart contracts;
• Task data, execution process, and settlement vouchers need to be fully recorded, and the Web3 on-chain evidence mechanism inherently possesses this capability.

In other words, the behavioral logic and collaborative paths of AI are precisely forcing Web3 to truly create a "closed-loop system." Many original concepts of Web3, such as "open finance," "intelligent collaboration," and "permissionless infrastructure," have always struggled to operate in the human realm, but now, for the first time, the possibility of a structural closed loop has been found in AI.

It can even be said that Web3 has finally welcomed the true users who "focus on structure rather than experience" in AI. This is not evolution; it is a return to the fundamentals.

Write at the end: The "0" of Web 3.0 may be AI

In the past, we often regarded "Web3.0" as a vision, meaning "what the future internet looks like", but few people seriously asked: what does this ".0" actually refer to? What new variables can lead to a qualitative change in the entire system?

Now we may try to answer: Web3.0 is not Web3 + NFT, not Web3 + DAO, not Web3 + a VC popular protocol, but Web3 + AI. Not to cater to the market, but because the two really complement each other in terms of structural logic.

AI has become an agent, an action subject that does not require company registration, account opening certification, or identity explanation. What Web3 provides is the only available account system, payment system, recording system, and fulfillment system— a set of infrastructure that allows it to participate in the market and operate independently.

If Web2 is a system designed for "humans", then the structural characteristics of Web3 may not have been prepared for human users from the very beginning, but rather as a rehearsal for another type of intelligent collaborator.

Left hand Web3, right hand AI, it's not about stacking hot topics, but rather a system logic that perfectly catches the other side.

This may be the true Web3.0.